Ah! ’tis the hoarse note of the Woodpecker,
In yonder ravine,
On the round trunk of a tree, above the hollow,
Sounding his horn before the coming storm.Yellow Hammer. (Penmelyn yr Eithin).
There is a strange belief in Wales that this bird sacrifices her young to feed snakes.
Ass.
The stripe over the shoulders of the ass is said to have been made by our Lord when He rode into Jerusalem on an ass, and ever since the mark remains.
It was thought that the milk of an ass could cure the “decay,” or consumption. This faith was common fifty years ago in Llanidloes, Montgomeryshire. I do not know whether it is so now. People then believed that ass’s milk was more nutritious than other kind of food for persons whose constitutions were weak.
The Bee.
The little busy bee has been from times of old an object of admiration and superstition. It is thought that they are sufficiently sensitive to feel a slight, and sufficiently vindictive to resent one, and as they are too valuable to be carelessly provoked to anger, they are variously propitiated by the cottager when their wrath is supposed to have been roused. It is even thought that they take an interest in human affairs; and it is, therefore, considered expedient to give them formal notice of certain occurrences.
Buying a Hive of Bees.
In the central parts of Denbighshire people suppose that a hive of bees, if bought, will not thrive, but that a present of a hive leads to its well-doing.
A cottager in Efenechtyd informed the writer that a friend gave her the hive she had, and that consequently she had had luck with it; but, she added, “had I bought it, I could not have expected anything from it, for bought hives do badly.” This was in the centre of Denbighshire.